{"id":187600,"date":"2025-10-03T15:04:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T15:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/187600\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T15:04:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T15:04:08","slug":"why-grizzlies-rookie-cedric-coward-might-be-the-gem-of-the-2025-nba-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/187600\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Grizzlies rookie Cedric Coward might be the gem of the 2025 NBA Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember the name Cedric Coward.<\/p>\n

The Memphis Grizzlies<\/a> might have just gotten one of the best players in the 2025 NBA Draft at the No. 11 overall pick.<\/p>\n

There’s a reason Coward isn’t well-known, but that could change soon. He’s caught the eyes of the Grizzlies already at training camp.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019s kind of exceeded my expectations,\u201d\u00a0point guard\u00a0Scotty Pippen Jr.\u00a0told The Memphis Commercial Appeal<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cI never really saw any of his (college) highlights, but I\u2019ve played and I\u2019ve been around top picks. I feel like he\u2019s been one of the better ones I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Seth Curry tried to take something that belonged to Steph<\/a><\/p>\n

Coward began his college basketball career at Division III Willamette University. He averaged 19.4 points and 12.0 rebounds per game in his only season there.<\/p>\n

From there, he played two seasons for Eastern Washington. In his second season, he averaged 15.4-6.7.<\/p>\n

Then it was on to Washington State. He was averaging 17.7 points per game on 39% 3-point shooting before a shoulder injury ended his season.<\/p>\n

He planned to transfer to Duke for 2025-26, but then he rose so high up draft boards he never made it.<\/p>\n

That’s a pretty impressive reality, really. A commitment to Duke for a guy who started his college career as a D-III hooper had to feel like a dream come true. And then to be so ready for the pros that you could forego Duke and head straight to the league?<\/p>\n

Look out, because Coward has arrived and certainly has no fear.<\/p>\n

More NBA News:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Remember the name Cedric Coward. The Memphis Grizzlies might have just gotten one of the best players in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-187600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}